Friday, September 2, 2011

Making git reset less dangerous

If you've ever fat-fingered a git reset HEAD~2 into a git reset HEAD~23 then this may be of interest to you. If you have, add this to your .gitconfig:

[alias]
r = !sh -c \"git log -1 --format=oneline\" && git reset

Using git r instead of git reset now prints the current HEAD before resetting.

$ git r --hard HEAD~23
9d09ffc3ba1a65fc7feefd21abd5adacf3274628 dix: NewCurrentScreen must work on pointers where possible
HEAD is now at 5083b56 Revert "mi: move switching screen on dequeue to separate helper function"

Whoops. Fat-fingered. A git r --hard 9d09ffc3ba1a65fc7feefd21abd5adacf3274628 will undo the above and get you back to your previous HEAD.

Note: git fsck --lost-found will also help you to find the commit again, but it'll take more time and effort.

Update: as mjg59 pointed out to me, git reflog records git resets, thus making it easy to find the previous HEAD too. Wish I'd known that command sooner ;)